Susan Kare Honored with AIGA Medal

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Susan Kare, who designed the icons and some of the fonts for the original Macintosh, has been awarded the prestigious AIGA medal. Previous recipients include design legends like Paul Rand, who Kare brought in to NeXT to develop the company’s distinctive logo.

To celebrate Kare’s achievements, the New Yorker has published a profile of Kare, who has designed icons for Microsoft, Facebook, and Pinterest, where she is now a creative director. Her designs also appear on the cards for the iconic Windows Solitaire game of the 1990s.

While all Mac users have seen Kare’s work — she was responsible for the Command symbol in Mac menus and on Apple keyboards — you can also see a few select pieces in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and SFMOMA in San Francisco.

The looped square (⌘) is a symbol consisting of a square with outward pointing loops at its corners. It is referred to by this name, for example, in works regarding the Mississippian culture. It is also known as the place of interest sign when used on information signs, a practice which started in Finland in the 1950s, spreading to the other Nordic countries in the 1960s. Also, the symbol is known as Saint John's Arms or Saint Hannes cross (related to Swedish sankthanskors, Danish johann It is an...

30 April 2018

And don’t forget the smile, the trash can, the dog cow, grabber hand, and the (arrrrrrgh) dreaded bomb. Or Chicago, San Francisco, New York, Cairo, Monaco, London, etc. - bitmapped, low res fonts that were so beautifully readable, scalable, modern and clean.

Utilizing an eclectic pool of sources ranging from pirate lore to ancient hieroglyphics, Kare then conceptualized the jargon into a digestible visual metaphor. The command symbol, for instance, was conceived when Kare pored through old symbology books for hours and saw the Saint Hannes cross, an ancient symbol also used by Scandinavians in the 1960s to mark locations of cultural interest.

I miss Clarus too, especially the animated one bellowing MOOF
Speaking of old times, yesterday I was in San Francisco and happened to drive by what used to be the restaurant that was the go to for the Netter’s Dinner.